The New Zealand Rugby team look unbeatable at the moment, but JOE has had a trawl through the archives for reminders that the All Blacks are human after all.
Four games into the 2010 Tri Nations and the All-Blacks are cruising and looking ominously good. Following their victory over Australia in Christchurch, Graham Henry’s side need only a single point from their two remaining games to retain the Tri-Nations title and are showing the sort of the form that makes their annexing of next year’s World Cup on their home patch seem like a formality.
Before we all give up entirely and concede that the World Cup is a foregone conclusion, we should remember that no team is invincible and that the All-Blacks were in similarly ominous form prior to the World Cup in 2007, where they crashed out to France at the quarter-final stage.
As a reminder that the All-Blacks are indeed beatable, we’ve trawled through the archives to bring you some of the best tries scored against New Zealand through the years.
Gareth Edwards: Barbarians v New Zealand 1973
Widely regarded as the best try of all-time. Welsh wizard Edwards put the finishing touches to a move that started under the Baa-Baa posts and moved through seven pairs of hands before the scrum-half dived to score in the corner. Makes the hairs stand on the back of your neck it was that good.
David Campese – Australia v New Zealand 1982
1982 was the year that the great David Campese announced himself to the world and having scored on his debut against the All-Blacks in Christchurch, he got on the end of a wonderfully flowing move involving ten players in a later test in Wellington.
Ricky Januarie South Africa v New Zealand 2008
The scrum-half won the Tri-Nations test for the Springboks at the death in Dunedin in 2008, with a beautiful chip and gather and a spectacular dive over the try-line. Unfortunately for South Africa, New Zealand went on to take the series.
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